Bonds says baseball won't take him back, and it's broken his heart

In January, baseball home run king Barry Bonds fell short of making MLB's Hall of Fame in his eighth year of eligibility, giving one of the sport's greatest players just two more years to make it to Cooperstown. And his odd place in the sport he once dominated appears to be wearing on him.

In an interview with the Athletic published Sunday, Bonds said MLB has given him a "death sentence" since he retired in 2007, saying the sport has used his off-field issues and allegations of steroid use against him.

"My heart, it's broken," Bonds said. "Really broken."

Bonds's 762 home runs are the most in MLB history, and the seven-time MVP also holds league records for walks (2,558) and intentional walks (688). He finished his career hitting .298 and slugging .607, and he hit 73 home runs in 2001 to set MLB's single-season record.

But his legacy became considerably more complicated when Bonds admitted to using steroids in 2011, saying his personal trainer led him to believe he was taking flaxseed oil and arthritis cream. That same year, he was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest for purposely using rambling non sequiturs to try to mislead a grand jury during a 2003 investigation. The obstruction of justice conviction was thrown out on appeal in 2015.

Federal prosecutors declined to appeal, dropping what was left of their criminal case against Bonds after a steroids-related prosecution that lasted about a decade. The next year, Bonds told Sports on Earth he regretted how he treated others during his playing career, saying "I was just flat-out dumb" and "I'm not going to try to justify the way I acted toward people."

"I know what I did out there," Bonds told The Athletic in the latest story. "I know what I accomplished between those lines. It's outside those lines that I would have done some things different."